


Vagabond

by Thene



Category: Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIII Series, Final Fantasy XIII-2
Genre: Alternate Ending, Clones, F/F, F/M, Love/Hate, Unintended Consequences, time paradox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-06-01
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1722197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thene/pseuds/Thene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serah pays Alyssa a visit, and finds her fracturing.</p><p>(Set after Transcript: The Future Is Hope.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vagabond

I remember my sister got mad sometimes.

It was usually around what other families would have seen as happy times - birthdays, festivals. We tried to keep them right, with little glowing plastic Fal'Cie outside the windows and a cake from the Bodhum Cafe because we didn't know how to make one, but among the grey effort of making do by ourselves, something could always push her beyond the brink of frustration. Dinner would get burnt, or I'd drop some treasured old decoration and watch it break into a hundred pieces on the floor, and doors would be slammed and something-or-others would get thrown at the other side of them while I sat, crying, in whichever spot she'd left me in. I knew she didn't mean it, though - she loved me, and she never apologised but I never made her because I know she didn't mean to do it. It was just hard for her, and I wasn't making it any easier. I'd curl up against my knees and forgive her in my head and think about what my parents might have said. _'Claire's just complaining again,'_ chiding a little, or, _'Claire is always trying too hard.'_ I always knew she was trying to do what was best for me, and that was it - she tried, she tried to be as good to me as two parents and got mad at herself whenever anything went wrong.

And it wasn't meanness or sternness - Light didn't even get mad at the things Mother might have got mad at. When I failed a test, she'd just sniff at me and ask when I was going to drop out and join the Guardian Corps. That was enough of a threat to get me back into my studies, and she knew it; I wanted to be a teacher, and that meant I had to work hard in school, not bunk off with NORA every day. Only some days. I realised, then, how mixed-up I was between the woman I'd always planned to become - a teacher, someone kind and smart who other people could look up to - and the woman I could become - someone like Lebreau, tough and stylish and not having to be anything for anyone. I started changing how I dressed, and Light didn't like it. She didn't get mad, though. I remember her grumbling that there were worse things I could have done.

Which I did, and I paid for it.

I remember breathing out, and not breathing in again. Everything turns clear and silent. It was like time didn't move, didn't leave any threadmarks of memory. But I remember gentle vibrations through a teardrop skin, whispering about love and family. I knew I was here. I couldn't see Gran Pulse, didn't know where I was (or even _that I was_ ), but I was here, and before I ever breathed in again I knew there was love here.

So I guess I don't remember Fang and Vanille, but I know I was near them. I can still feel it every time I see the sunshadow - that's what we call that time early every evening when the sun shines on us straight through the pillar. I'll go out and lie on the beach under the sunshadow with Lebreau, surf lapping over our legs and breaking into rainbow-light colours, and our whole world is lit by the crystal. Lebreau flicks a handful of saltwater at me and laughs, or some days she even realises how I feel and wraps me in her limbs in the water, and I try to remember being a crystal. I just want to say, _thank you. You held up Cocoon for us._

And I try to remember seeing my sister here.

There's a lot of women who've looked out for me, guided me, loved me.

Alyssa is the first woman who ever hated me.

 

"'Hate' is too strong a word." She's playing carefully with her words, twisting cuffed hands together as if she wishes she could indicate something more precisely. "That's not why I wanted to get rid of her."

The other one nods - of course she understands - and adds, "It would have been a very sad journey, if it had all been for hate. What a way to travel through time."

I lean into the one-way glass, as if by touching the edge of her cell I could understand what was happening inside it. The duplicate's hands are free, and she rests her weight on them as she leans backwards, bare legs curled under her on the floor. That's the only way I can tell the two figures apart. Hands bound, hands free. They're both Alyssa.

Noel's fingers brush my shoulder, reminding me that I've got to get my head together, got to do what I said I'd do and deal with this alone. I didn't know I'd be _outnumbered_. "Noel, how did she...?"

"Hope said something about a data storage chip implanted in her skull." Noel made it sound like a question, not so much a _how_ as a _why_. Good old Noel - and it's strange, thinking of him as a memory when he last saw me only yesterday. But thirteen eras is a long time - a lot of fighting back-to-back with Snow, or, in the bad times, sometimes against Snow, a lot of trouble, a lot of nights spent on strange ground and days atop Shiva's back, riding through time. We came back the day after we left. Didn't want to risk not being here when...well, as Snow put it, we never wanted to say _'If only we'd been there to fight alongside them.'_

Noel's taking his mission seriously - I could tell by the red in his eyes. He's also taking _me_ seriously; Hope didn't want me to see Alyssa, Snow didn't want me to see her alone, but Noel just backed me up without asking why. He takes a step backwards, holding my eyes, reading me as if we were fighting monsters together - _have you got this?_ I nod at him - _I got this_ \- and he turns on his heel and leaves.

The door to the observation room slams behind him and I put my hands to the glass, hissing words as if she could hear me; " _Then why did you want to get rid of me?_ " I put my hands to my mouth after speaking, amazed by my own rage. I was never this mad at a woman before.

I stay frozen there for minutes before she starts talking again. I feel the silence ticking, tocking, ticking. Almost wish she'd heard me.

It's the real one, the handcuffed Alyssa, as if answering a question that her doppel hadn't had to ask. "I didn't even know what it would do. He told me she'd just go into a dream, and my timeline would be fixed. I'd get to keep my life."

"I believed him," observed the duplicate.

"I didn't want to know. I've never been a worse researcher," she admits. "But I had to try. Strange thing is, I hope I'll still be here to stand trial. They got me for everything in the book - treason, attempted this-and-that, misuse of artefacts... And I can't stop hoping I hang on."

"Me too. If you go, I go."

"You'll never have been uploaded. There'll never have been a me there to upload you." She sighs, and lifts her bound arms upward, ducking under them to cup the back of her head. "They would never understand that, would they? When the Purge happened, at least I was only afraid of dying." She laughs. Her laugh always sounds sweet and girlish. "And there's no moral rules for that - there's things I'd die for, people..." She trails off, and her duplicate looks unmoved. "But how can there be something you'd _stop existing_ for?"

"Is there a difference between hating someone and being afraid of them?"

Alyssa frowns. "Duplicates aren't always the best at emotions, I guess? Or is it me who's not good at them?"

"I'm going with option two," I snap. The duplicate doesn't volunteer a comment.

"When I saw them straight out of that time gate... They turned my world upside down, y'know? At first, I thought they'd solved everything - I felt real for the first time in years, and I could finally put the past behind me. But I was always thinking of Serah and looking for her after that. A real time traveller!" Her awe makes me smoulder, and I wish I could burn up the glass with a spell. "I thought about her for years before I saw her again. Then the more I studied and learned, the more the unreal-feeling came back."

"And then, Caius -"

"He only told me what I already knew, and offered me a way to fix it. That's all I wanted to do. Fix it, so I wouldn't have to think about her or any of it again. I wanted her out of my hair!" She shakes her head, laughing. She sounds mad. She must be mad. Even the duplicate's looking at her weird now. "That's how it all began, too. In the Purge. Just move your problems along someplace else. That's the Cocoon way. Drop your problems on Pulse, get them out of your timeline. All because of what Serah Farron did, Cocoon already threw me away."

 

I've tried so hard to remember being a crystal. All I've got is these echo-like impressions. So I don't remember that conversation but Snow told me about it, and he said I was there, a crystal cupped in his hand in his pocket. I can only remember it in his voice, not mine, not theirs.

I don't know what started it. That's the creepiest part, that they could have been talking about almost anyone - Light, or maybe Dajh, or Snow himself. But someone asked about someone's parents and Fang said, _"I don't get it. Cocoon folks had everything they wanted and no one ever starved or got ate by a behemoth, so how come everyone's parents were dead? There's less orphans in Oerba than there are with you lot."_

Snow might have talked smart, but I know Lightning wouldn't have said anything. So I guess it was Sazh who gave her the answer that Snow passed on to me, which was: _"On Cocoon, some people just got thrown away."_

 _"Like in the Purge?"_ That would have been Vanille. Fang never went through the Purge.

 _"Yeah, like in the Purge."_ And it's typical, I know, you go along because someone you love got thrown out - your spouse, your child, your friend - and they made you choose without ever telling you, like it's your own thought, like it was all your own idea to pick between life and Fal'Cie or love and nothing. We don't think outside that box they made for us. If I'd been Light, I wouldn't have thought of anything else - I would have just got in line. I wasn't even a fighter then. I would have died following my sister instead of staying behind alone.

I can imagine Alyssa, standing right behind me in that line, talking to herself.

"I'm sorry," and I kick myself for whispering it again, long after Snow convinced me not to. But I'm only imagining. I wasn't in that line. Alyssa was beside Nena and I was way ahead of them, carried off in a Pulse vestige. I was why they all got thrown away.

 

Time doesn't give a damn for your ignorance. It doesn't care if you meant to do it, or if you didnt know what would happen if you did. Time just gets you later, guilt ticktocking away, reminding you that even if you didn't know what you were doing you knew damn well it was the wrong thing for you to do. 

I only opened a door.

"I only gave her a stone," Alyssa says quietly. "I didn't know what would happen. Maybe she would have made it through her dream. Who knows?"

Maybe Alyssa would have made it through the Purge. How would _I_ know? But I can't say that even to myself - I _teach kids_ about the Purge in school, and I tell them how few of us survived from old Bohdum, and I tell them that on Gran Pulse, we don't throw people away any more. We promised that to the crystal pillar. No more human sacrifices.

What are we supposed to do for someone who was already dead?

"I don't know," Alyssa says again. "Maybe I do hate her. She was going to _end_ me, and she didn't even care! Why would I care what happened when I gave her the stone?" 

"I used to care," noted the duplicate. "I thought she was the key to it all..."

"She was," the other Alyssa replied darkly. "She was the spine of my world. She made me real - and she could take it away again." My eyes flick stupidly from one to the other. Their fragility. Their hate. _Angry dolls_ , I think, and the duplicate reaches out, holds her hand against Alyssa's face, offering intangible self-comfort. My knees are shaking with rage and desolate, lurching fear. _Angry broken dolls -_

"So..." The duplicate tilts her head in wonder. "If we disappear, what about Nena?"

"What _about_ Nena? Maybe she died when Cocoon fell, or maybe she lived a long life on Gran Pulse and died three hundred years ago. Removing me doesn't bring Nena here. It doesn't solve anything."

The duplicate nods. "I don't think anyone else remembers her, not in this time. No one would know of her." Her voice is programmed-cool and totally misfit with the desolate words. She hates me, and I'm clinging to that even though it feels as slippery as the glass. She's playing with my sympathy and she doesn't even know I'm here. She's more bothered by no one knowing about her friend than by the part where she tried to kill me! And now I'm staring at that black world without her, another dream, fuzzy shadows over everything Alyssa ever ever said, all her inventions and discoveries, dozens of her missing from a tower that never was. 

The real Alyssa turns, almost looks at me. Her blue eyes are distorting in the glass, two and two and more through my tears, through all I'm feeling. 

"Wait, _when_ were you uploaded?" The duplicate spat out a series of numbers robotically, too fast for me to even parse them. The real Alyssa shakes her head, dismissive. "No you weren't - that's two hours after they arrested me -"

They stare at each other and I hear _tick, tock, tick, tock, tick_ in my ears.

She laughs. She has that infectious, joyful laugh, and it sounds so wrong now. "You're a paradox!" She shakes her head, and I swear I see its scintillating corona through the dark glass, worn like a halo. "You're a _fragment_ in my head. Was I always a paradox? I was. You were always there. Always -"

 

I'm staring at a dark pane of glass, and I don't know why.

**Author's Note:**

> I love the name of the Vagabond Artefact.
> 
> I love this ship, but I can't make it float. There are holes in it.


End file.
